Britain’s reliance on fossil fuels has increased for the first time in four years, dealing a major blow to Ed Miliband’s Net Zero hopes of decarbonising the grid by 2030. The Telegraph has more.
Gas-fired power plants generated 26.8% of power in 2025, a rise of 1.1% from the year prior, according to new figures from the Government’s National Energy System Operator (Neso).
This stemmed largely from reduced nuclear output across Britain, as the country’s nine remaining reactors were hit by technical faults and unplanned blackouts.
The latest figures also revealed that the UK relied on imports for up to 14% of its electricity last year, with London and the South East frequently powered by energy from France.
Increased reliance on fossil fuels and continued imports from overseas will raise fresh scrutiny over the Energy Secretary’s goal of attaining clean power by 2030.
To achieve this, Mr Miliband has vowed to spend billions of pounds on intermittent renewables such as wind and solar farms, with the cost of this expansion set to be passed through to households and businesses.
Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary, has accused Mr Miliband of needlessly driving up bills and putting the country’s energy security at risk.
She said: “What this data shows is that we need reliable, 24/7 power for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine – and that means more nuclear and more gas.
“Ed Miliband’s plan to build more wind and solar farms than ever before will do nothing to power our economy on a cold, windless, cloudy day.
“His ideological approach to energy policy means British families are going to continue to see their bills rise, jobs lost overseas, and the risk of blackouts increase.”
The Energy Department hit back by blaming the previous government for “years of dither and delay on new nuclear”, with a spokesman claiming that this left the country reliant on power plants dating back to the 1960s.
Total nuclear output fell from 13.7% of UK generation in 2024 to 11.8% last year, the latest Neso figures show, with a string of plant failures to blame.
Worth reading in full.
Ed Miliband increasingly seems to be living in a fantasy world. It is now blatantly obvious to everybody that Britain’s net zero targets are utterly impossible to achieve. Yet he continues to march on towards the edge of the cliff claiming that other countries will follow Britain’s insane plans. Yet he appears to be unsackable. We are doomed.
“Ed Miliband increasingly seems to be living in a fantasy world.”
Without a doubt. And unfortunately, he has a lot of company.
It’s shocking that these Net Zero politicians can’t see the Writing on the Wall. Net Zero is a failed enterprise. Continuing it will only make things worse, not better.
He needs to look over his shoulder. If he did, he’d see that no-one is following him except four horsemen.
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Total nuclear output fell from 13.7% of UK generation in 2024 to 11.8% last year, the latest Neso figures show, with a string of plant failures to blame.
…
Sound conclusion
“She” has a firm grasp on the obvious. Did she just figure this out?
Which is, of course, Nuclear Generated energy
Most nuclear power in the UK is some 37 years old. (wind and solar will never last anywhere near that long) and has been told it is closing in a couple of years.
That means maintenance will be wound down and more problems will arise.
They could have been kept going much longer.. but the minibrain want to destroy the countryside and the economy with erratic, environmentally-destructive, short-lived, expensive to implement, and highly polluting, wind and solar.
If properly maintained Nuclear can last upwards of nearly 80 years
In Washington State, the Columbia Generating Station went on-line in December 1984, or 41 years ago. They do partial refueling every two springs (when hydro is plentiful), along with normal maintenance and improvements if available. [The facility is 100 miles south of me.]
As I understand it from people I know who work at the Columbia Generating Station, there are currently no technical show stoppers which would prevent the station from reaching eighty years of service.
And possibly even to one-hundred years of service if enough money was spent in the decade prior to the year 2064 to prepare it for safe and reliable operation until 2084.
This is true. Oconee Nuclear Station (SC) is now licensed to operate 80 years.
When even the NESO uses power when they mean energy, and then only the energy distributed by the electricity grid we know they are a bunch of ignoramuss.
See Gridwatch.co.uk . Yesterday at 12.00 hrs the UK would have had an almost complete blackout without gas fired generation.
It was more precarious even than that. CCGT was in fact maxed-out. So without gas AND the French ICT (which was also maxed-out, all day, and even now) we’d have had blackouts.
I don’t want to be too fretful about using all the available resources at once. It doesn’t make sense to massively over-build. But we could do with more of a buffer than we’ve got. A few minutes of battery storage wouldn’t make a speck of difference if France went off-line yesterday.
Average duration of BESS in UK is just under 2 hours. NESO’s plan for 2030 is storage of 147.39 GWh which could keep the grid running for 3-4 hours.
And midday is not the peak either.
Luckily, the wind picked up in the afternoon, so I could make myself a cup of tea.
The trouble with ‘free’ energy like wind and sun is that you can’t buy any when you need it.
Ed Miliband also wants a big switch to Electric Vehicles, which will add at least 15GW to electricity demand.
Where is that coming from?
They’ll use all the hot air coming out of Mad Ed’s department to drive turbines…
Maybe they can train bugs to run on hamster wheels tied to generators?
The trouble with “Free Energy Like Wind” is that the consumer has to Pay Through The Nose to make use of it
Yes. For a lot of yesterday 30GW of wind was delivering a bit over 2GW. When the current gas plants reach end of life, which is pretty soon, and nuclear comes offline, which it is scheduled for – its been extended for a couple of years recently – then the only possibility is rationing followed by blackouts.
This is inevitable in the next ten years, and very likely in the next five.
Its too late now to build more gas, because the lead times for the equipment are years. There is nothing to be done, the failure happened five or ten years ago, when the UK should have been planning for replacing and increasing its gas fleet.
Literally blowing up coal plants didn’t help either…..
And plants that still had plenty of life left in them, in some cases… They were only closed to keep the EU happy.
Nuclear plant extension is on a wing and a prayer, they extended Hunterston B a few years ago and the cracks appeared not long after resulting in closure. These new extensions are on the same design.
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/hunterston-b-nuclear-plant-shut-25878818
Had UK not shut down steel mills and other industries, the country could have had a self-contained logistics system for these things.
Gridwatch….
We have 30 GW of nameplate capacity for wind in Britain, and their dial to record wind only goes up to 20.
I think they know more than Miliband about the productivity of a wind turbine.
Their obviously slitting their own throats by relying on
RenewableRuinable Energy. As is evidenced by their need for increase FF generation. Renewables=UNRELIABLES!!!Really? Blaming the previous administration is how they’re playing this? They knew the nuclear plants were old, and new ones were needed, yet still went ahead with their idiotic Net Zero plans.
Politicians always blame and never, ever concede fault. Usual traits of psychopaths.
Psychopath is the wrong word. Sociopath (aka libertine) is the correct term.
The blame for the lack of new nuclear plant in the UK lies with the current leader of the Lib Dems, Ed Davey, who was a minister in the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government of 2010-2015. His reasoning was that nuclear took too long to get up and running and other forms of generation would start producing sooner. Typical short-term thinking that politicians are prone to. The man always was a clown!
Which in and of itself doesn’t make sense since Nuclear IS ZERO emissions
Bruce,
I understand it goes a lot further back than that when a planned nuclear expansion was dumped for wind instead. That worked out well
Hazel (Oreshnik) said hello to Ukraine’s largest gas storage site near Lvov last night and it went boom boom. The storage site supplies several European countries.
Grok say “In recent years (post-2022 Russian transit reductions), European companies have increasingly stored gas here for security of supply, with withdrawals benefiting neighbouring EU members during peaks. No single facility exclusively supplies one country—it’s part of Ukraine’s integrated system aiding regional energy security.”
The second time that Moscow has used the Oreshnik last was in November 2024 so at that rate the next is due in Feb 2027. Putin claims it’s destructive power rivals that of a nuclear weapon even when armed with a conventional warhead in which case Lvov would be removed off the map.
The realty is it looks like they still haven’t worked out how to stop the conventional warhead exploding due to excessive heat and once again fired a dummy inert warhead. It will do limited damage due to the lack of explosive and like the first fire was largely symbolic that Putin is upset about something.
It’s a veiled threat that one day they will sort out how to build an explosive warhead to put on it and it will do great damage. At the moment it can’t carry any explosive warhead conventional or nuclear and it gets to throw lead weights over the border.
Personally I think it is a mistake it gives USA and EU a look at launch times, actual speed and trajectories to now work on an interception plan. There are already known arms being developed like
https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/missile-defense/glide-phase-interceptor
‘
The fact a fleet of spy planes landed in UK yesterday suggest Putin has a leak and USA knew about the planned launch. If USA knew about then likely Ukraine did as well.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/fleet-of-us-spy-planes-amassing-at-raf-bases-in-britain/ss-AA1TO8Kf
Iirc the Russians already have hypersonic missiles with explosive warheads like Khinzahls.
Why should it be so much of a problem with the Oreshnik?
As the heat-up isn’t instantly a simple acceleration to full speed during the end stage could also solve the problem.(assuming it can operate with variable speed)
Another reason why they don’t use warheads may be the power of impact.
If it is anywhere close to what they claim they simply can not do such an overkill..
Russians can’t exterminate tens of thousands of people and then pull a Madeleine Albright
” it was worth it to kill 500000 iraqi children” . ( I wonder where the European upsetness has been back then to sanction the hell out of USA)
They don’t control global information flow via Facebook and Google to get away with it
nor is their population used to such a level of genocide on civilians.
nor is their population used to such a level of genocide on civilians.
The purges of the 1930s onward murdered somewhere between 10 and 20 million in Russia. Started with the purge of the Leningrad Party. But there had been lots of smaller and less systematic outbreaks in in the whole post WW1 period too.
We call them Stalin’s purges, but actually to do it on that scale requires a pretty general effort and participation by the population.
Then you have to add the Ukraine famine toll, several million in a deliberate Moscow directed operation.
Read Robert Conquest.
So actually, if there is one country which is well used to genocide on civilians, its Russia. Right up there with Pol Pot, Rwanda and China. Its business as usual for Russia.
You know you can google that stuff but anyhow different sort of missile it’s a glide boost missile
https://thebulletin.org/2024/03/hypersonic-weapons-are-mediocre-its-time-to-stop-wasting-money-on-them/
What makes it hard to stop is it flys low but that is where the heat comes from
Quote from the article ===>
As the aerodynamic heating of a body increases with roughly its velocity cubed, a vehicle gliding at Mach 5 would experience more than 100 times the heating of one gliding at Mach 1 at the same altitude. A further threefold increase in the speed—from Mach 5 to Mach 15—would increase the heating by an additional factor of nearly 30.
Ukraine tracking put the missile at 9800mph or Mach 12 in glide phase so the heating would be immense. So the missile was a success but still no-one has solved the heating issue. I assume Putin was just trying to prove it couldn’t be intercepted.
Dynamic pressure and related air friction.
Not of great significance, the photo above this article appears to be a gas power plant in Arizona. I’d prefer to see a UK gas plant.
Hi Scissor. I can’t seem to find the plant in the photo in Arizona (and I don’t want the search the whole USA!). Can you please give me a reference?
Thanks!
There is an Airport nearby that has self declared it will be in the near future the first UK Net Zero Airport. It is so badly affected by encroaching Wind Turbines its objecting on radar/air traffic control issues on recent Turbine planning applications. When are these virtue seeking idiots going to get real and understand that Net Zero is pointless and if you support it then you also support the destruction of the very environment you are allegedly trying to protect.
I know the date when the virtue seekers will get real. Either Neveraury 32nd or the 5th of never are my top choices.
JFK airport and Newport shipyard.
Just to be clear, whatever the problem, whatever the issue might be, the stock answer is: it’s all the the fault of the previous government. But Labour has been in government for well over a year, now – and with two disastrous budgets under their belt.
Following rules as the third rate lawyer Starmer does, leads to the utter incoherence we have. And maintaining the narrative is what really matters…
This year’s Christmas could be Britain’s greenest yet, energy operator says
System operator Neso predicts lowest carbon intensity ever on Christmas Day after new wind and solar power come online – Delusion Central.
What cost of living crisis?
From solar power and energy efficiency to meat taxes and frequent flyer levies, the politicians consistently failed to appreciate people’s appetite for policies that tackle global heating. – Damian Carrington
My house is semi-detached, but Damian Carrington is completely detached – from reality. We need our oil and gas resources, government wants the complete opposite; whatever the cost.
It is a continuing frustration to see renewables” touted as “clean” while having CO2 called pollution. The massive infrastructure required to build renewables is not pollution free, and their short productive life span results in major amounts of waste.
In contrast, CO2 is a naturally-occurring gas which is mildly warming but which is also an essential plant nutrient that has produced major increases in fruit and vegetable yields as well as forest and grassland spread. CO2 is a funny sort of pollutant.
A “typical” human exhales ~ 2 lb. of CO2 per day.
So yes, natural.
Miliband knows exactly what he’s doing and the goal to completion isn’t that far off. Fellow travelers have been congregating in the UK for decades just waiting to take over and “save” the people. NATO will be history along with any remaining sovereignty in Europe. Conspiracy theory? Only until it actually takes place.
Let the deadenders cling to the stumps and boulders while the river of humanity flows on to the “smart” outcome. Note the use of the word smart as a dig against the lobbyists that overused that term in leading to all those costly dead-end policy choices.
The climate ayatollahs don’t back up because they have no Plan B. Their whole money scheme, marketing plan, and NGO support system is based on the one plan. This is why regime change is the only answer.
Over the past week or so California has been dependent on “Import” power.
Keep an eye on Today’s Outlook | Supply | California ISO
Battery Prices Are Falling—But Here’s the Real Cost of Grid-Scale Storage
Yes, battery prices at the factory gate have dropped from $134/kWh to $125/kWh in the past 12 months (BloombergNEF data). Sounds great, right? But here’s the rest of the story: what it actually costs to install, commission, and connect those batteries to the grid.
Summary
The UK’s largest battery storage project, Thorpe Marsh, gives us a real-world benchmark:
Now apply that to NESO’s 2030 target of 147.39 GWh:
Cost Projection Table
Expanded Cost Breakdown per MWh (USD)
Category Approx %Cost per MWh
Battery Modules & PCS 45–50% $185k–$205k
Civil Works & Labor 20–25% $82k–$102k
Grid Interconnection 10–15% $41k–$61k
Commissioning & Compliance 3–5% $12k–$20k
Engineering & Design 5–8% $20k–$33k
Project Mgmt & Overhead 5–7% $20k–$29k
Financing & Contingency 10–15% $41k–$61k
TOTAL—$400k–$510k
Conclusion
Factory battery prices may be dropping, but installed, tested, and commissioned grid-scale storage costs are 3–4× higher than the cell price alone. For NESO’s plan, that means $60–$73 billion—and that’s before financing and O&M.